


Alliance Doesn't Mean Forever

by Corycides



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-16 14:05:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Randall's Pyrrhic victory in the Tower, Charlie finds that her only hope of survival is an alliance with the man she hates the most: Sebastian Monroe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kawabiala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawabiala/gifts).



By the time Neville found them the missiles had hit, no-one had the heart to fight. Not even Uncle Miles. They let him cuff them and take their swords. It was a sign of how bad things were that he didn’t even gloat.

Charlie couldn’t look at Jason in the lift on the way up. That was OK. He couldn’t look at her either. Guilt and blame hung between them like a curtain. Jason had betrayed them - again, and the fact it was her only made it worse - and she might have helped kill everyone they knew. Including his mother. What was there to say now?

In the shuffle topside Charlie ended up sharing one of the choppers with a rabbity-looking captain who wrung his hands. He’d lost half an ear recently, the scab of fresh cautery crusting the wound. Charlie didn’t want to talk to him either. She hunched over, leaning her elbows on her knees, and stared at the cracked toes of her boots.

The captain broke the silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. She looked up, a frown pinching her eyebrows together.

‘What?’

‘For this,’ he explained, grabbing her arm. He wrestled her up, ignoring her hobbled attempts to fight, and dragged her over to the open door. The wind caught at her clothes and hair, tugging her out. She dug her heels and grabbed at the doorway with cuffed hands.

‘No. No. Please,’ she said.

‘I have to do this,’ he said, sounding angry at her for not understanding. He yanked at her hands, her nails ripping off down to the quick. ‘General Neville’s orders.’

He shoved her, the heels of his hands thumping against her back. Her stomach fell before she did, but she still fell. She didn’t want to scream for them, but she did. As the ground spun up towards her she closed her eyes and hoped that preacher who’d come through their town once was right. She’d like to see Danny again, and Nora.

There was a sharp, body-wide pain and then everything greyed out to black.

Waking up was a surprise. It was cold and she hurt, from fingertips to toenails, but she wasn’t dead. She coughed, spitting up blood and water, and tried to move, kicking against nothing.

‘Charlotte,’ a rough, familiar voice growled in her ear. ‘Stop it. Calm down.’

Fuck that. She struggled and slapped, dunking them both. Her sluggish brain caught halfway up with the day, realising she’d landed in the lake. She splashed her way back to the surface, sneezing and spitting still, and tried to swim. Pain stabbed up her leg every time she kicked, her foot flapping clumsily and at angles it shouldn’t move, and one arm wasn’t working right.

Monroe came up a few feet away, his face grim.

‘You going to drown yourself from spite, Charlotte?’

‘Yes,’ she spat.

He trod water with irritating ease and waited.

Charlie’s arm got tired, her aching leg dragging until she couldn’t make it move anymore. She went under again, sucking in a mouthful of cold, stale water. The adrenaline kick gave her enough energy to struggle back to the surface.

Not enough to fight when Monroe hooked his arm around her chest, fingers digging into her ribcage. She could feel his body under hers, his chest against her back like a float, and his breath was hot against her neck.

‘I seem to be making a habit of rescuing you, Charlotte,’ he said, towing her towards shore.

She’d have fought him if she could, but she felt as about as strong as a wet rag. The best she could manage was resentment as she leant her head back against his shoulder.

‘I didn’t ask you to,’ she muttered.

‘Your mother did.’

Charlie grimaced, her mouth kinking around the knot of feelings she had for Rachel, and didn’t say anything. When they reached the shallows she tried to stand up, but her leg crumpled under her - sharp pain jabbing up into her knee from her ankle. She bit her lips bloody to stop from screaming and tried again, lurching from fall to fall like that was walking.

Five steps was all she could manage before she ended up on her hands and knees on the stones, puking up mouthfuls of sour bile and water. It burned her throat even as the cold racked shivers through her.

Monroe waited until she’d done and then picked her up, cradling in his arms like a child. He carried her up the shore, stumbling over the rocks and breathing hard. It was reassuring that she wasn’t the only one knackered.

They reached the shelter of an old beached tree and he let her slide out of his arms. Charlie bit her lap and balanced on one foot, hanging onto him reluctantly.

‘What did you think jumping out of a helicopter was going to accomplish?’ he asked, lowering her down onto a hummock of grass.

‘I didn’t jump, I was pushed,’ she sullenly. He crouched down in front of her and started unlacing her boot. Charlie thought about kicking him, but - sorry, Danny, always sorry - it seemed an impossibly amount of effort. ‘Why are you helping me? I want you dead.’

He cupped one hand behind her knee, holding it in place, and pulled her boot off. It hurt like someone was twisting barbed wire around her foot. Charlie screwed her eyes up tight against tears and pressed her fist against her mouth, chewing on her knuckles to hold back a scream. Monroe did her the courtesy of pretending not to notice, tossing her boot aside and poking at her foot roughly.

‘Is it broken?’ she asked through gritted teeth, knuckling tears out of her eyes and willing him to prove her wrong and say no.

If it was broken, he might as well let her drown. Even if she survived - out here, alone, barely able to hobble - she’d be stuck. No way home. To whatever was left of home. She didn’t even know the way, never mind being able to walk there.

‘Can you wriggle your toes?’

She bit her lip and tried, the curl of her toes yanking the barbed wire tight around the bone. A sob snotted out of her.

‘It’s broken,’ Monroe said, putting her foot down. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

Shit. Charlie dropped her head back against the tree and tried not to break down.She almost missed his next question.

‘Did Tom leave any men at the Tower?’

‘Why?’ she asked.

Monroe looked at her like she was stupid. ‘We need food, shelter and, unless you want that foot to fall off, medical supplies. The Tower’s our best bet.’ He ran his hand through his hair, shuddering as the water ran down his neck. ‘So, guards?’

He wasn’t leaving her. The wave of relief that hit Charlie brought her closer to tears than desperation had. She still hated him, but...he wasn’t leaving her. Blinking back tears, she sniffed and tried to remember.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, voice small and cloggy. ‘He left the tents, but I didn’t see anyone left behind.’

A humourless smile twisted Monroe’s mouth. ‘He doesn’t have enough men to sacrifice them for guard duty,’ he said. ‘Not when he wants to take over my Republic.’

‘By now it’s probably gone,’ Charlie said dully.

‘Georgia won’t have moved that quickly,’ Monroe said.

It took a second for Charlie to remember he’d not been in the room with Randall. Hating him so much, made it feel like he was. She wiped her hands over her face, cheeks raw with water and tears, and hesitated, wondering if she should tell him or not. In the end, it seemed like the right thing to do.

‘When the power came back on,’ she said slowly. ‘Randall launched IBMs towards the East.’

He looked blank for a second, then swallowed. ‘ICBMs,’ he corrected. ‘Did they land.’

Charlie looked down, hiding behind strings of dark hair and couldn’t bring herself to answer. His hand tightened against her calf, making her flinch, and then relaxed.

‘So it’s gone,’ he said quietly, voice odd. ‘After all that.’

He looked...Charlie wasn’t sure...but after a minute he shook whatever it was off and stood up. Charlie tried to drag herself up the tree, but he just picked her up again. She squirmed in protest.

‘Just get me a stick,’ she said. ‘I can walk.’

Monroe snorted. ‘I want to get there today,’ he said. ‘And if I drop you, that ankle isn’t going to get any better.’

He waited. Charlie thought about it for a second and then made herself relax, hanging on to the shoulder of his jacket with her hands.

‘You never told me why you were helping me,’ she said.

‘Want me to stop?’ he asked.

Her fingers tightened helplessly on his jacket, fear cold in her bones.

‘I promised your mother,’ he said, walking along the beach. There was silence for a second and then he added, in a quieter voice. ‘I promised Miles - a long time ago.’


	2. Chapter 2

Charlie had been wrong. There were four guards left at the Tower, armed with automatic weapons and stationed in front of the broken doors of the Tower. Miles would have made some sort of sarcastic comment about her powers of observation, Monroe just said they were to keep the locals out.

‘All the activity, someone is going to come nosing around to find if there’s anything they can steal.’

His voice was dry with contempt. Charlie felt like she should argue with him - just because it was him - but everyone knew the Plains-folk were thieves. The one time people had been grateful for the milita was at harvest, when the raiders came sneaking over the border.

‘What’ll we do?’ she asked.

Monroe looked over at her - hand-cuffed, broken-ankled and shivering so hard her teeth chattered - and then back down at the camp. He chewed absently on the side of his thumb as he thought.

‘I could be a distraction,’ she said.

‘You could get yourself killed,’ he said. ‘Stay here.’

Like she had a choice. Like he’d have needed her help if she was whole. Monroe killed as efficiently as Uncle Miles - she felt a bit guilty for giving him that much credit - and came back to get her. His hands were bloody. She thought about Danny and the Rebel boy who’d died after they met Nora and Father Nicholas and maybe she shouldn’t accept his help. At all. Nora wouldn’t, she’d have spat in his face.

Charlie wasn’t that brave. She grabbed his slippy hands, digging her fingers in for purchase, and let him haul her back up off the dirt. This time he didn’t pick her up, just let her lean and hop her way down into the camp.

‘Can we stay here?’ she asked. ‘If looters are coming.’

He grimaced, more at her weight than the question, she thought. ‘Stop borrowing trouble, Charlotte.’

‘That’s not my name.’

‘It was written on the back of the picture Ben sent to Miles.’

‘No-one calls me that.’

‘I do.’

Bloody hands hadn’t given her pause, but Charlie quailed at going back into the Tower. It felt like the recoil of what they’d done - what they’d allowed to be done - was seeping out of the cold metal like bleeding lime from mortar. Monroe just hooked his fingers through her belt-loops and dragged her with him, footsteps echoing off the metal walls until they got to the infirmary.

‘This is going to hurt,’ he told her, grabbing her hips and lifting her up onto the stretcher. ‘Think about how much you hate me.’

He cut her still-damp jeans off and rubbed his hands on his jacket. Charlie propped herself up on her elbows and looked down. Her ankle was bruise-blue and swollen, skin tight to the point of tearing. It looked worse than her arm had when she’d broken it. Monroe gripped her calf and the heel of her foot in cold hands.

‘Ready.’

She twisted her mouth in answer and lay back down, gripping the edges of the cot with white-knuckled fingers. Just breath through it, she told herself, it couldn’t hurt more than being blown up or stabbed or-

It did.

Monroe pulled on her ankle and she screamed, banging her head back against the flat pillow, and then he twisted her foot and she passed out. Unconsciousness was, thankfully, free of the unhappy dreams that had plagued for her from months, it was just a dark that felt of nothing.

By the time she woke up her ankle was set and strapped into a clumsy, open boot. The echo of agony hung around the bone and when she rubbed her eyes her lashes were wet. She was alone.

Fair enough, she supposed as she struggled into a sitting position. He’d done more for her than she would have for him. Her ankle was set now and he’d propped crutches by the bed, she just needed to find somewhere to hole up while she healed. Then...Then she guessed she’d walk to Philly - again. Or towards whatever was left of it anyhow.

It wouldn’t have killed him to take the cuffs off though, she thought as she looked down at her metal-linked wrists. Still, Charlie manoeuvred herself to the edge of the stretcher and slid off, she knew how to pick a lock. Nora had showed her. She grabbed one of the crutches and hobbled over to the cabinet to hunt out a clean needle she could repurpose as a pick.

She’d just jabbed her thumb for the second time when Monroe came back in, a heavy bag slung over his shoulder and a mag-coil gun cradled in the crook of his arm. He looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

‘You couldn’t wait?’

Charlie sucked the blood from her thumb. ‘I thought you’d left.’

He gave her a sharp, bitter smile as he propped the gun by the door and the bag on the bed.. ‘And people say I’m suspicious and paranoid.’

She shrugged and let him take the needle off her. ‘I’d have left you.’

He bent his head over her wrists, working the pick deftly. She was uncomfortably aware she was sitting there in just a cropped t-shirt and her knickers. It felt...vulnerable. ‘No, Charlotte, you’re too soft-hearted for that. You’d have killed me cleanly, not left me to suffer.’

Charlie wished she could be as sure of that. The cuffs clicked loose and he slid them off her wrists, breaking the scabs of dried blood in the raw weals over her wrist-bones. He slathered them with ointment and bandaged them up with cool efficiency.

‘I’ve disabled the lifts,’ he said. ‘The first five floors have plenty of food and normal weaponry to keep them busy looting for a couple of months. By then your leg should be better.’

‘Thanks,’ Charlie said, the word scraping reluctantly out of her throat.

‘I’m not doing it for you,’ he told her, standing up.

 

* * *

 

The Tower was vast enough that the two of them could have gone months without seeing each other without even trying. Instead, they stuck to a small territory of corridors and rooms they had marked off as their own. They shared one of the small dorm rooms - it was practical, until Charlie got the hang of the crutches she could hardly make it to the toilet alone - and ate at the same time and in the same room.

Sometimes they didn’t talk for days, but they were never really alone.

* * *

 

There weren’t a lot of books to read in the Tower. One dog-eared copy of The Hobbit in someone’s desk, a couple of military biographies of people she’d never heard off and a couple of copies of 50 Shades of Grey. She already knew The Hobbit off by heart practically - it had been their school’s only English textbook - and it turned out that 50 Shades was nothing she wanted to read while General Monroe was in the same room as her.

So the military biographies it was. She was a soldier after all, maybe she could learn something. Except the biographies assumed a pool of common knowledge that she didn’t share. Usually she just skipped over those bits, but sometimes-

‘Why was Russia at war with Georgia?’ she asked abruptly, looking up from the book. ‘What did they do?’

Monroe was cleaning one of the mag-coil guns, the parts neatly separated and laid out in front of him. He’d sacrificed three of them before he learned how to put them back together, but he seemed personally offended at the idea of using a gun you couldn’t maintain.

‘Georgia was trying to reclaim contested territory,’ he answered without looking up.

Charlie was trying to work out the logistics of that when Monroe looked up and finally caught up with her confusion.

‘Not that Georgia,’ he said. ‘It’s in Europe, next to Russia.’

‘Oh,’ she said, trying not to flush and, from the burn in her ears, failing miserably. ‘I didn’t know that.’

She disappeared back behind her book, feeling as stupid as she had when Mom and Aaron were talking computers. Sometimes she thought about how different the world was now, with power, and it was...daunting. It was one thing not knowing about computers - there’d been people before who didn’t know, Uncle Miles and Randall - but she didn’t even know places.

‘It’s probably not even there anymore,’ Monroe said. ‘After the blackout...who knows who’s sitting in the Kremlin now, or what they’ve claimed.’

Charlie lowered the book. ‘Was everywhere like here?’ she asked wistfully. ‘Did everyone just rip each other to pieces?’

Slot and click and the gun was back together. Monroe sat back and rubbed his hand through his hair. He’d raided one of the lockers for clothes and she could never quite get used to him in jeans and a worn white t-shirt. For all she’d hated him all this time, he’d never really been real to her. Never been someone who changed clothes or dog-eared pages in books or played endless games of solitaire without cheating.

‘We don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Afterwards, we didn’t have any idea what was happening elsewhere. Some people thought it wasn’t happening elsewhere, that this was some terrorist attack against the US and help would arrive from Europe any day. You should have asked in Georgia, they’ve been trading with Europe.’

Charlie pulled her good leg up onto the chair, wrapping her arms around her knee. ‘I think that was a lie,’ she admitted. It didn’t really matter now did it? Georgia was gone, so was the Republic. ‘When we in Georgia I never spoke to anyone who’d spoken to someone from England or Europe or seen a ship that came from there.’

‘My spies saw long ships in the harbour,’ Monroe said.

‘Yeah, I saw one of them too, but they weren’t from Europe,’ Charlie said firmly. ‘They didn’t resupply, how are you going to get from Georgia to Europe without fresh water or food? I talked to the dockers too, and they said she came in over the reefs. That’s the wrong heading.’

He stared at her for a second, eyes gone cold and thoughtful. Then he chuffed a half-laugh and shook his head. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. It was a good lie, held us off for years. I’ll give Kelly that.’

‘Atlanta was beautiful,’ Charlie said quietly, wanting to put a pin in the brief good humour. ‘She did that, too. A whole different world from the Republic.

The pin worked.

Monroe shoved himself up from the table. ‘When you see Miles again, Charlotte, ask him about the Plantations. Ask him why the Republic broke our alliance with Georgia, on the grounds we couldn’t stomach it.’

He left. Charlie slouched back down into her book, telling herself he was just jealous that a woman had a better territory than him and would have won the war if he’d not had the pendants. Except - she flicked one of his dog-eared pages absently - no-one had ever talked about going over the border to Georgia. People fled west or north, to the Plains and to Canada, if the Republic was too hot for them, no one went east.

Two days later the lights went out.


	3. Chapter 3

There was probably an answer to why the power had failed again in the Tower. Neither of them had the background to track it down though. Monroe went topside to investigate, popping the hatch on the elevator and going up the cable, and Charlie sat in the corridor with the mag-coil in her lap, in case one of the looters came back down instead.

It was very quiet in the Tower without him. Charlie tried to keep track of the time, but it seemed like he was gone forever. She’d just started to get scared when the lift rattled and he dropped back down, landing with a thud on the metal.

He had put his uniform back on to go scouting. It made him look severe, like General Monroe. Charlie’s finger was already resting on the trigger of the gun. All she had to do was pull. Her ankle was set, getting better. She wasn’t ready to go trekking across the country, but she could survive on her own now. Pull the trigger and Danny would have his revenge.

Except Danny hadn’t wanted revenge. That had been her, and mom.

‘If you’re going to do it,’ Monroe said tiredly. ‘Get on with it.’

Charlie hesitated a second longer, not sure whether she was trying to pluck up the courage to pull the trigger or to not pull the trigger.

‘I owe you,’ she said, unhooking her finger stiffly. ‘It doesn’t matter how much I hate you, I pay my debts.’

‘Thanks,’ he said dryly, taking her hands to pull her up off the ground. It was almost a habit by now. ‘It’s not just here. Everything has gone back out.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Did Mom...’

‘I don’t know,’ Monroe said. His mouth twitched grimly. ‘Just like last time, we’re all in the dark - except maybe Rachel.’

‘Maybe it’s the nanites,’ Charlie said. ‘Maybe they didn’t want to be turned off.’

Monroe considered that for a grim second. ‘I think I prefer to blame Rachel.’

Remembering how cold her mother had been when she left Nora to die, Charlie wasn’t sure.

* * *

Without the power to maintain the dry heat of the Tower, the cold of winter soaked down through the stone. Charlie lay shivering under every blanket she could find, simultaneously cold and sweaty under her layers. It wasn’t the cold keeping her up. Monroe had gotten sick. She’d slept through the cold before, but never through one of Danny’s restless nights. That training meant it was Monroe’s rapid, dry coughs and his dream-fretted muttering that kept poking her awake again.

Finally, she scrambled out of her cot, still wrapped in a cocoon of blankets, and limped over to his side of the room. She’d woken Miles from a nightmare once and gotten a black eye and two weeks of miserable self-recrimination from him for it. So she stayed just of flailing range and cleared her throat.

‘Monroe,’ she said, voice sounding surprisingly loud. ‘Monroe, wake up.’

He twitched awake abruptly, pushing himself up on one elbow and scrubbing his hand over his face. ‘What?’ he asked, voice sleep-thick. ‘What’s wrong.’

‘You’re talking in your sleep,’ she said. ‘It’s keeping me awake.’

His face sharpened, his mouth pulling tight. ‘What did I say?’

‘Nothing much,’ she lied. ‘You mostly just mumble and grunt.’

‘Right,’ he said, dropping back onto the mattress. He shoved his hand through his hair, making it stand on end. ‘I’ll try and suffer quieter.’

Charlie twisted her mouth around the words before she said them. ‘Budge over.’

‘Charlotte,’ he said, low and even rougher than usual from coughing. ‘I’m not a eunuch, and it’s been a long couple of weeks fucking my hand.’

She snorted and pretended she wasn’t blushing, unwrapping her blankets and dumping them on top of him. ‘I’m wearing all my clothes,’ she said. ‘I’m more naked during the day. Budge.’

Nothing happened for a minute, then he shifted over until his back was to the wall and lifted the blankets. He _was_ naked. Charlie crawled into the warmth of his fever and tucked herself into the curve of his body, head on his shoulder and hand on his chest.

‘Go back to sleep,’ she said. ‘Don’t make me sing to you.’

His arm tucked around her waist and he shifted, resting his chin in her hair. ‘You’ll catch my cold.’

‘I already have a broken ankle. A cold isn’t going to make much difference.’

He stroked her hair idly, twisting the strands around his fingers. ‘Miles would kill me if he saw this.’

‘Just go to sleep.’

They weren’t doing anything.

* * *

 

Charlie’s ankle was still weak, but the bone had mended. She suffered through the exhausting regime of exercises that Bass set for her, flexing and circling her ankle until the disuse tightened tendons stretched and ached.

Now that she could fend for herself a bit more, Bass left more often. He came back with fresh food and information. Occasionally he came back stinking of cheap perfume and sex, although it didn’t seem to improve his moods any. Which was good, because that gave Charlie a good reason for the resentful anger that made her pricklier than her usual.

It wasn’t like he was the only one frustrated. She’d not had sex since Atlanta and between Jason’s injuries and the war, they hadn’t exactly had a lot of time to themselves. At least he got to go out and do something about. She was stuck down here, half a mile anything except the dead her and Neville had left in their wake.

She dwelt on the unfairness of that sometimes. Resentment was easier to deal with than...whatever the rest of this was. It wasn’t that she’d forgiven Bass, it was just sometimes she forgot to hate him for whole days at a time.

Then something would happen and she’d not be able to forget her hate, like a sharp, cold stone lodged in her chest.

She found Rachel’s office. Her parents’ office, she supposed although it was hard to fit her Dad into the scene. Her Mom didn’t fit here either - the one she remembered...the one she’d thought was real when she was younger - but Rachel did.

It was neat and bare. Other offices had diplomas hung on the walls or pictures or empty pots that had presumably once held plants. Rachel had nothing like that. Just files and folders and a picture of Danny on her desk.

He had the teddy bear they’d dragged with them for years, before it got eaten by a goat, and a ridiculous sailor costume she wished she’d known about when...when he was alive. Charlie looked through the drawers, pretending she wasn’t, but there were no pictures of her.

It was the only picture of Danny that Charlie had ever seen. She thought about taking it, but that little boy was Rachel’s Danny. It didn’t seem right. Of course, he didn’t seem right that he was dead either. Buried on some patch of land she didn’t know if she’d ever find again, if it even existed after the ICBMs.

There was a bottle of whisky in another office and a gun.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Uncle Miles would have drunk the whiskey and not used the gun. Mom would have used the gun and left the whiskey. People said Charlie looked like her mother, her mother said she was like Miles. The choice was not clear at all.

For the second time in a month Charlie stood over a sleeping Bass, curling her toes against the cold stone floor. He’d left the candles burning - for her, probably -and he looked tired, even asleep. One hand was draped over his forehead, the sculpted muscle of his arm leading down to the oddly endearing hollow of his armpit. 

She poked his elbow with the muzzle of the gun. It was how to pinpoint when he went from being asleep to awake, he didn’t really move, but she could tell. Somehow the stillness changed.

‘Open your eyes, Bass,’ she said.

‘I’m tired, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘Just get on with it. If anyone’s going to kill me, I guess you have the right. I killed your brother.’

‘You didn’t kill my brother,’ Charlie said. Her voice cracked and she hated the words. ‘He was a soldier, if only for a little while, and he died in a firefight. It happens.’

That made him open his eyes. He stared at her in the candlelight, lips parted to let his tongue dab his lower lip. His attention flicked from the gun to her.

‘It was my fault.’

‘Yeah,’ Charlie said. ‘It was, same way the people I killed were my fault. I guess...I guess even they were someone’s son or brother or father. There’s probably someone out there, who blames me as much as I blamed you.’

‘Does that make us even?’

He reached slowly for the gun, moving carefully like he thought she might be unpredictable. Charlie let him take it off her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It makes us...I don’t know, but killing you wouldn’t make us even either. It wouldn’t make anything better.’

He ejected the cartridge and relaxed when he found it empty. ‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Budge over,’ she told him, pulling her t-shirt over her head and dropping it to the ground. 

‘I should ask if you’re sure,’ he said, sliding over to give her room.

‘Are you asking?

‘No...yes,’ he said, dragging the last word out between his teeth like it didn’t want to come. ‘You hate me.’

‘Yeah,’ Charlie said, shoving her trousers down over her hips. ‘Sometimes. A lot of the time. But...I can’t kill you just because I hate you. I’d rather be someone that took a risk on assuming the best about you.’

‘So...’

‘Just shut up.’

He still slept naked. He still wasn’t a eunuch.

Bass’ hands on Charlie were tentative, dusting against the curves of her like she was the good china. It was Charlie who tugged him close, curling her hand around the nape of his neck, and kissed him. It felt like betrayal at first, chilly and dry, but then he kissed her back with rough desperation, pressing her back into the pillows. He kissed her like he was trying to pin the moment down and keep it.

This. Now. It wasn’t anything to do with anyone else, anything else.

She kissed him back fiercely, exploring the ripe lines of his mouth with attentive lips and the heavy slopes of muscle on his back with her fingers. Her knee nudged between his thighs, sliding up to nudge firmly against his balls. He made a rough sound and tugged her closer, the slickness between her legs sliding over the hard muscles of his thigh. His hand curling around the curve of her ass.

‘You’re shaking,’ he murmured, kissing his way down her throat. His stubble scraped her skin and  ‘Am I so scary? Still.’

‘No,’ Charlie admitted, aloud and to someone else for the first time. ‘That’s what’s scary.’

She felt his smile against her throat and his fingers between her thighs, finding how wet she was. Part of her still cringed at that, hated the weakness of it. Most of her groaned and pushed down against his fingers, urging him deeper, wanting more.

She’d expected him to be...rough and hot and impatient. Fucking like a soldier, both of you trying to get off as hard and quick as you could before the next fight, the next march. No niceties. Instead he kissed and touched and explored her body, from collarbone to breasts, from knee to the tender skin at the juncture of hip and thigh. Between, lifting her leg over his shoulder.

‘I’m already wet,’ she protested impatiently, even as she lifted her hips to open herself to his mouth. ‘You don’t need to do that.’

He snorted, the tickle of breath against tender skin making her hiss and curl her toes against his back.

‘Who have you been fucking?’ he asked her. 

Charlie flinched, a little. She didn’t want to talk about Jason, didn’t want to think about him. It still hurt, the death of what they might have had. It had been all kisses and stolen corners, but that didn’t make it...less.

‘It’s not about what I need to do,’ Bass said.

He kissed her there, mouth hot and sweet against tender skin and his tongue licking patterns against her. Charlie bit her lip, refusing to let the raw, wanting noise she could feel in her throat out. Pleasure tweaked down her thighs and into her stomach, muscles pulling tight under tanned skin. She squirmed restlessly, he grabbed her hips to hold her still. His thumb traced idle circles on her hipbone while his tongue mirrored the movement between her legs.

Then he thrust his tongue inside her, firm and wet and...weird. It didn’t feel like a cock, it didn’t feel fingers and...

Charlie dug her heel into his back and reached back to grab the headboard, fingers clenching as he sucked and licked at her, touching every single bit except _that one._ She arched up against his arm, body tight and achy. His tongue was inside her, slow, torturing thrusts that made her want to scream. It wasn’t _enough_ and it was _too much_ and...

‘Bass, God, please,’ she begged, forgetting she hadn’t been going to give him that satisfaction. He laughed, and she would have kicked him off her, but...the tickle of his breath and lips nearly made her come all on its own.

He swirled his tongue around her one last time, then up...his lips puckering around the tight nub of nerve endings. His tongue flicked against it and his teeth were _just there_ , not quite touching. She was so sensitive she wanted to scream and it still wasn’t _quite..._ and then his tongue swiped over her like a cat, flat, firm pressure. Charlie arched up off the bed, Bass holding her up, as everything splintered inside her like hot sugar on your tongue. So sweet and hot it almost hurt. She barely got her hand to her mouth to stifle the noises she made as she came, biting the heel of her hand hard enough to leave marks.

Bass was still kissing her, his mouth hard and eager as he tasted her orgasm.

After she was done, sprawled and boneless on the bed, he kissed his way back up her body to her mouth. His lips were wet and tasted of her. It was odd, but he didn’t seem grossed out by it and it was her juices on him so... She kissed him back, awkward with her leg still hooked over his shoulder and her knee bumping her shoulder.

‘Now, you’re _wet,_ ’ he said, lifting his head and grinning at her.

She stared at him, breath gone still in his chest. Long enough that his face hardened with ready-suspicion. ‘What is it?’

There was nothing Charlie could say. That she wished she’d met the man with the smile instead of the man with the gun? That she could see why her uncle had never, no matter how hard he tried to want it, been able to kill Bass. That he _was_ Bass now, not Monroe - like she could pretend they were different people.

Instead she cupped his cheek, tracing her thumb across his mouth. 

‘You’re very handsome when you smile.’ He looked confused. It sounded ridiculously prim even to Charlie, something one of the women in those romance books Hettie Lamb used to trade for would say. She slid her hand round and twisted her fingers in his unruly, sweat-spiked hair and pulled him down for another kiss. ‘Now will you fuck me or not?’

She felt him let go, relaxing into her like he trusted her. Maybe he did. It was easy to trust someone who _needed_ you as much as Charlie had - did - him. He tugged her lower lip between his teeth.

‘I suppose when you ask so nicely,’ he drawled.

He shifted position, lifting her ass up off the bed and hooking her other leg up over his shoulder, and buried himself inside her in one quick, hard thrust. Caught halfway down from her first orgasm, aftershocks of pleasure still warm in her muscles, Charlie grabbed his shoulders and swore under her breath as her body trembled right back into a state of aching want.

Apparently sex could be...different.

He shifted his hands to the bed, bracing himself, and thrust into her. This was rough and hard, hipbones bumping and muscles tight and bunched in his shoulders. Charlie flexed her legs and lifted her hips, drawing him deeper inside her. With his hands occupied she could focus on touching what she wanted, one hand cupping her own breast - fingers teasing the nipple to tight, tingly hardness - and dragging the nails of the other down his chest. She wanted to leave marks on him, didn’t want to think about why.

Bass watched her for a while and then leaned forwards, his weight against her legs and his cock buried so deep in her that it almost hurt, to brush kisses across her lips and jaw. Charlie reached down and stroked her fingers along his thighs, tracing the taut lines of muscle with her nails as they flexed with each thrust. 

He bit her lip, startling her mouth open for another kiss. She moved her hands up and in, finding where their bodies joined. She knew how to touch herself, where her fingers went and how long to linger, and all she had to do was touch his cock and he groaned.

Heat puddled in her groin, warm and liquid wet, and then spilled over in a shudder wash of pleasure. Her body fluttered tight around Bass’ cock and he rocked against her, chanting her name against her cheek. The ‘Charlotte’ was rough as sand in his low voice. 

She didn’t mind it here, loose-limbed and aching sweetly under him. 

Her head dropped back against the pillow and she grinned at him, loopy with satisfaction. He dragged her hand up, kissing the taste of them off her fingers, and drove into her with hard, deep strokes that jarred through her hips. 

She shoved at him.

‘Off,’ she said.

He stared at her, blue eyes and boyish confused expression - still inside her.

‘Bass,’ she said, squirming. It didn’t help, his eyes darkening and the hand braced by her head clenching in a fist. She thumped his shoulder. ‘Get off me.’

Realisation lit his face and pulled back, almost in time. He came across her thighs and in the thatch of sandy curls, wet against her sex.

‘Sorry,’ he said, sprawling out on top of her. His cock rested soft between her thighs and his mouth moved against her throat, teeth scraping hard against her skin. ‘You’re the third Matheson who’s tried to kill me, the first to try doing it with sex.’

She stroked her fingers through his hair, tucking it down behind his ears. ‘This was...this wasn’t...’

Bass bit her neck again, sucking hard and kissing away the small pain. ‘Don’t be stupid, Charlotte. It was, it does.’


	5. Chapter 5

Fucking Bass had been supposed to cross a line, scratch an itch and simplify things. It didn’t.

They had ground through two months of Tower-association on the grounds of a worn-down obligation. Now there was something else. Charlie just wasn’t sure what it was. Friendship wasn’t right. She didn’t like him, they argued more than ever now she made an effort not to throw the blame for Danny in Bass’ face. They weren’t currently enemies, but they both knew they could fall back into that.

It was awkward and...fragile, whatever it was. At least, it was for Charlie.

Charlie sat at the kitchen counter, chin resting on her arms braced on the scratched plastic, and watched Bass cook. He gamely claimed the scrawny animal he was disembowelling was a rabbit, but even field-dressed Charlie could recognise squirrel. She’d ate it often enough, before she got good enough to take down deer.

He was humming under his breath, singing snatches of lyrics under his breath. It was tuneless and didn’t make much sense, but he seemed...happy.

‘I’ll be able to leave soon,’ Charlie said, interrupting him. ‘My ankle’s nearly up to it. I need to go east, to find Miles and the rest.’

That got her a snort. For some reason, Bass thought she should like her mother better. No. Charlie knew why. She’d seen the graves, but it had been too close to home not to touch and she hated him too much to empathise. So she’d tried to forget she’d seen them at all.

She twisted her hands together, hunching her shoulders.

‘You don’t have to come,’ she said.

He gave her a sharp look - one that she couldn’t read. Sometimes he was like glass, emotions laid out like wares on a stall for her to see. Other times she’d no idea what he was going to do.

‘Tired of my company already?’ he said.

‘You kept your word, you kept me safe,’ Charlie said. ‘And back home, whatever’s left, you aren’t exactly...’

‘Wanted?’

She was pretty sure that was a loaded question. What was she meant to say though? Lie that people would be glad to see him? Unlike his talking in his sleep, that would be an obvious lie.

‘Neville will have you killed,’ she said. ‘If he can get away with it, you won’t even get a trial. If you do get a trial... Well, you’re guilty aren’t you?’

It wasn’t an accusation, she was tired of accusations. It was the truth, though.

‘Tom will have you killed too,’ he said.

‘He’s tried before,’ Charlie said, lifting her chin. ‘On your orders. He never managed it.’

‘In fairness,’ Bass said. ‘I only ordered your death once. The rest of the time it was just indifference...or did you think we had something special, Charlotte?’

It stung - for a variety of stupid, childish reasons that Charlie refused to admit existed- but Charlie ignored that.

‘I thought-’

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Charlie said, standing up. ‘Follow me and get yourself killed or stay here and choke down your squirrel. It’s no skin of my nose.’

She stomped towards the door. Her ankle wasn’t up to stomping. It turned under her with a sharp pain and she tripped over herself, landing on her elbows on the floor. She didn’t know which hurt more, jammed funny bones or freshly throbbing ankle.

Usually it would be Bass helping her more. Rarely particularly kind, but there. This time he let her wobble back to her feet on her own. She rubbed her elbows and bit her lip, trying not to look hurt.

‘Follow you where, Charlotte?’ he said. ‘It doesn’t look like you’re going to get far.’

They didn’t sleep together that night. Charlie waited until he was asleep and left, grabbing a pack full of rations from the canteen and the most practical looking knife she could find. She hovered over the bow Bass had traded for, but he’d need that for hunting.

Looted boots laced tight around her ankles, Charlie threw the pack out the hatch in the roof of the elevator and scrambled up after it. She’d seen Bass do this a dozen times, but looking up at the dark climb was still daunting. It was the only way out though, so she shrugged her pack on and grabbed the heavy cable to start up.

A quarter of the way up and her ankle was burning, her foot going numb. It was a bit late for second thoughts though. By the time she reached the top her hands were raw and she was so exhausted she barely trusted herself to make the long step over to the narrow ledge. She plastered herself to the lift doors, breath misting against the metal as she waited to stop shaking.

Once she did, she pried her fingers into the crack in the doors and wedged it open wide enough to squeeze out.

The Tower had daunted the looters as much as it had her. They’d smashed as much of it as they could reach, smashed the rest. It hadn’t meant anything to Charlie, but she wondered if her mother would have cared to see her life’s work torn apart? Or her Dad.

Maybe. Or maybe they wished they’d done it before any of this started.

The first couple of nights Charlie slept warily, half-expecting Bass to appear out of the shadows or the trees. He didn’t. She supposed she didn’t blame him. Maybe he’d realised that she was right, that he’d have a better chance of a life if he went west as someone else.

Or maybe he just realised he didn’t care about her?

It was the cold little voice that she’d first heard the night her Mom left - for the first time - the one that had explained it was her fault. Charlie curled up in the dark - no fire, it wasn’t safe when you were alone - and shoved the little voice back in its hole.

Bass didn’t owe her anything. He’d paid whatever debt he thought he owed her mom, or Miles, and fucking didn’t mean anything. As General of the Republic he’d probably had someone different in his bed every night.

It had been an alliance, and now it was over.

After a week she realised that was true and the cold little voice crowed at her stupid, childish, treacherous misery. She kept going east.

She traded a bag of dehydrated chilli packs for a bow and what news had made it out this far. Death and refugees and war fought under the flag - so far away the tribe she was trading with treated it like silly gossip.

Two men followed her out of camp and cornered her in a clearing, rocks to her back and the river to her left. She killed them both. An arrow through the first man’s throat and a knife in the throat of the other.

Just another Monday.

Charlie had killed before, but she’d seen these men with their families, their lives.

She was sick in the bushes, retching until it felt like her stomach was turning inside out. Then she washed her face in the river and went on. The ache in her ankle became a constant, barely noticeable over blistered feet and aching hips. She’d walked further. It was different with company.

The storm hit when she was on one of the old roads, battering down against half-stripped cars and running in great, nearly invisible puddles over the smooth stretches of tarmac. Charlie hunched her shoulders and hesitated, but the road was wide and enviably straight.

Impossible to get lost on.

Not until she hit the tangled roadblock of rusting, intertwined lorries smashed together in the middle of the road. The road around them was runnelled with scars from the fire and melted in great, slick sided pits from whatever spilled out of one of the trucks.

She scrambled up the bank, dragging herself out of the mud with handfuls of woody-stemmed weeds, and detoured around the first obstruction into a second one and a tangled web of barbed wire and bells alarm system she gave a wide berth to. It was easy to get turned around in the driving, obscuring rain, and it was starting to get dark.

The hot flicker of a flame beckoned in the distance. Charlie hesitated, pushing strings of wet hair out of her face. It was safer alone, and a little - a lot - of rain probably wouldn’t kill her. Wandering around completely lost in the woods would though. If there was someone that knew the area, she could get her bearings.

It wasn’t hard to follow the light to its source. It wasn’t a campfire, it was a bonfire of cars and smashed trees smouldering with sullen persistence under the rain. Bass was pacing in front of it, hair plastered to his skull and slicker - of course, he’d found those - flapping around him like wings.

‘You asshole!’ Charlie yelled, throwing her pack at him. ‘You followed me!?’

He slapped the pack out of the air, his face hard with anger.

‘Sorry,’ he said, voice sliding low and cold. ‘Did I interrupt you dying of exposure? Didn’t Miles teach-’

Charlie knew the rest of the lecture, so she didn’t see the point of listening to the rest of it. She grabbed his jacket and pulled herself on her tiptoes, muffling his words with her mouth.

They’d kissed before, when they were in bed (or wherever they were having sex), but not like this. Not long, slow kisses because they were there and you... You’d missed them. The heat from the fire scorched Charlie’s side as she buried her face in his wet neck.

‘I thought you’d gone,’ she said.

His hands were resting against the curve of her hips. ‘You. Left.‘

The words echoed in the hollow that Miles had left behind him. Charlie rubbed her nose into the crease of his shoulder. ‘I didn’t think you’d let me.’

It took a second, but Bass hugged her back. His hand slid up to cup the back of her neck, fingers spreading over the damp nape

‘Clearly, I didn’t.’

Charlie still didn’t know how she felt about him. Glad as she was to see him now, tomorrow she might not be able to bear the thought of him. Nothing he’d done had gone away, and she’d have to face that sooner or later. Not tonight, though.

‘Good.’

* * *

 

Miles scratched his arm absently. The raised welt of scar tissue still felt strange, like a dead patch on his skin. He’d avoided being branded for 10 years of the Republic, 30 of being Bass’ friend, but Tom hadn’t offered the choice. It was a lopsided N - all gobbets of scar tissue and ragged edges from the drag of the hot poker.

On the other side of the field, the US army massed - work gangs dragging the heavy cannons through the squelching ruts of muddy earth.

‘What next?’ one of the young conscripts said, clutching his cheap musket in sweaty, big-knuckled hands.

Miles didn’t know his name. He’d tried not to care and it hadn’t worked, but he didn’t need to know another name to add to the roster already on his conscience. Charlie had that pride of place.

A grizzled Texan who had fought Miles back during the Austin campaign gave a humourless bark of laughter and spat.

‘We’re gonna die,’ he drawled.

‘If not today, then surely tomorrow,’ Miles said. ‘Might as well get it over with.’

The cannons cleared bloody tunnels in the conscripts. That was what they were there for though. Miles kicked his way through the guts and rags of what had been people - not letting himself think about it - and sliced a man who looked vaguely familiar from ear to ear. Maybe he’d been one of the rebels. Most of them had gleefully joined up when the ships landed.

It was the US government after all, just what they’d always wanted. The fact they’d bombed half their population to glass and smut on a wall, wasn’t a problem. Not yet.

A baton caught Miles in the knee and he went down, barely blocking the first slashing blow from above. The sabre scraped along the blade, caught his arm and pared off a slice of skin from wristbone to elbow.

This was it, he thought. It was almost a relief.

Then the militia came slicing in from the flanks, cutting the shocked US forces to pieces. Miles rocked back on his heel, bloody arm caught to his chest, and stared at them as he waited for his brain to catch up with events. They fought like they used to, back when it had mattered: sure and deadly.

In the forefront, splattered with blood and bright with that nervy, fever energy that kept him going in a fight, was Bass.

Maybe he was dead, Miles thought, and this was hell. Or heaven. Same thing, really...for him.

‘Cut off their retreat,’ Bass yelled the order. ‘I don’t want any stragglers getting away. Kill them all.’

Hell, Miles decided as he heard the familiar order. It was hell.

Then rough hands were dragging him to his feet and off the battle. It seemed as good a time as any to pass out.

He was still sore, still aching and hungry, when he woke up, but he was lying on a cot not on the dirt and no-one was screaming. Not within earshot anyhow. It was a small luxury but Miles was willing to take it.

‘I know you’re awake,’ Bass said.

‘I thought I might be dead,’ Miles said.

‘You look it.’

Miles snorted with laughter and opened his eyes, staring at Bass. His brother sprawled in a folding chair, grubby and tired looking. There was a fresh scar through his eyebrow and cheeks were closer to gaunt than not.

‘Tom will piss himself when he finds out you’re alive.’

A smile with no humour in it showed Bass’ teeth. ‘Good.’

‘The militia?’ Miles said, propping himself on his elbow. His injuries were bandaged and smelt of antiseptic.

‘Refugees, recruits, deserters. Apparently the fact that Tom’s reign saw the Republic slagged and the US government invade, makes me look positively angelic by comparison.’

He stood up and held out his hand. ‘Still brothers?’

Miles stared at it. 5 years he’d run and what had it got him? The Republic had been corrupted and bloody, but it had been something. He sat up and gripped Bass’ hand weakly.

‘Still brothers.’

Bass smiled and used the grip to haul Miles to his feet. ‘Then we’ve got work to do.’

The flap flew open and a girl in olive green came running in. Charlie? Miles stared at her, mistrusting his own eyes. She was dead.

‘Miles,’ she said, that sweet, happy grin that he’d always known would get him killed lighting up a face a little older, a lot tireder. Then she hit him, rocking him on his worn boot heels, and hugged him so tight he thought he’d crack a rib. ‘You’re alright.’

‘I saw you fall,’ he said.

Tom had pointed to her, hair flapping as she spun. Nothing Miles could do, but hold Rachel as she screamed.

‘Into the river,’ Bass said. ‘I pulled her out.’

He said it like it was a challenge, a tally in a column that put him ahead. Miles shook his head and let himself hug Charlie, stroking her hair and kissing her temple. He picked her up, ignoring the squawk of tired bones and her muffled protest, . ‘Thank you, Bass.’

‘Aaron?’ Charlie said as he put her back down. She stepped back and Bass stepped forward. Miles tensed, but she seemed used to the hand on her shoulder. ‘My mom?’

Dead. Probably wished she was dead. How was Miles meant to break that news? He didn’t need to in the end, helpless silence was enough to make Charlie’s face crumple.

‘Tom?’ Bass asked. ‘Is he an ally on an enemy.’

Miles shoved his sleeve back up his forearm and showed the brand. ‘When I meet him, I’m going to stick the poker he did this with up his ass.’

‘Enemy then,’ Bass said pleasantly. He tugged Charlie back against him, and that wasn’t casual. Bass gave Miles a quietly challenging look over Charlie’s head. ’Good. I only ever needed the Mathesons’ for friends. Kept it simple.’


End file.
